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Acts 2:22
People of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.
The thing that always surprises me about this is that the sermon ‘worked’.
I preach a lot of sermons and am acutely aware of the need to have good content, to deliver it well, and to consider the question of what are the congregation actually hearing, because it may not be the same thing that I think I am saying. I am also aware of kinesthetic learning, of a desire for intuitive and interactive ways of learning and growing as disciples (which means growing in love not just growing in knowledge). And despite of this desire for a more post-modern approach to learning in church I am aware of the theological importance of the spoken word. After all it was the word which brought creation into being.
And considering all of these things I am aware that a very few sermons are memorable, and others are almost instantly forgettable (but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t useful); oftentimes the same sermon can be forgettable and memorable depending on the listener. All of these considerations need to take into account two thousand years of church tradition and history which is throwing its weight behind each one of the sermons I preach.
And then Peter stands up with no history or tradition and tries to convince a crowd of Jewish people whose rich tradition of monotheism might have persuaded them otherwise, that a human being called Jesus is God, and that despite the fact that he had been killed he is now alive and sitting next to God in heaven. A lot of people listened to the sermon and believed and responded. This was in part because of the way Peter shaped it: he referred to Jewish tradition, the prophecy of Joel, to show that what was happening was supposed to happen.
But there must have been more than that. A word from outside, an ‘external word’ (what Luther called externum verbum), a power that no one gathered there could have mustered up themselves: A kind of word that could create worlds. So it was the Holy Spirit that made the difference.
That is the kind of word we need to pronounce. And every sermon should allude to that fact that we need this external word, because there is no way we can save ourselves...
